First I appreciate everyone's time in reading my humble post. I'm looking for advice for ideas in upgrading... ok, building a new computer surrounding the "nVidia GeForce GTX 260" that I was lucky enough (and humbly grateful) to win.

Here is my (sad) current setup.

--------

P4 2.8 single core

1 gig Corsair RAM

GeForce 7600 GS

Gigabyte 8IPE1000P-G

Windows XP

Apevia ATX-AS500W

--------

What I would like is to be able to play, well, my copy of Fallen Earth at greater that 640x800 resolution which is what I'm sorta stuck with now playing Borderlands with everything turned down/off. A runnable 1400x1050 (my monitor resolution) or near would be great at 60+fps for me. I'm also newb with trying to figure out if I should upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 since I'm upgrading and don't want to run into compatibility issues with xp.

Intel or AMD I am indifferent too, sort of partial to ASUS boards.

Price is the biggest issue for me, so a "budget" fix would be wonderful, but yet a setup that would be able to utilize the Vid Card.

I got a Best Buy card... so I'd like to order the parts from there... but I'm a big fan of Newegg too.

So again, I appreciate your time and help!

----------------------------------------

Vid Card: nVidia GeForce GTX 260

CPU:

RAM:

PSU:

Mobo:

OS:

I'd go with something based on amd phenom II 720 BE cpu. Forget the nvidia card, save up for radeon 5850. 

Originally posted by dfan

I'd go with something based on amd phenom II 720 BE cpu. Forget the nvidia card, save up for radeon 5850. 

He stated he just won the video card here in the fallen Earth contest, and would like to upgrade around it. Not sure why you told him to forget the nvidia, considering that was the whole purpose of his post.

@Lansid: Not sure as to what your budget is, but you did ask about either Vista or Win7. Without hesitation, Win7. As far as the rest, throw a tentative budget out, and let's see what we can come up with.

Triple core in a genre that rarely used two cores?  Bad advice.  Vista or Win7 for a genre that rarely uses DX10 and when it does... badly.  No.

Windows XP SP3

AMD Phenom II X2 BE

Asus AMD 770 board

4GB DDR2

2x 500GB Raid 0

Once in Windows use Overdrive and Performance control panel to O/C the nVidia and AMD to safe levels.  That system will be built for MMOs, dirt cheap and stable.  Windows 7 is not ready for the gaming masses and well Vista never was.

Originally posted by Respit

Originally posted by dfan

I'd go with something based on amd phenom II 720 BE cpu. Forget the nvidia card, save up for radeon 5850. 

 

He stated he just won the video card here in the fallen Earth contest, and would like to upgrade around it. Not sure why you told him to forget the nvidia, considering that was the whole purpose of his post.

 

Read in hurry, my bad.
 

Originally posted by Solude

Triple core in a genre that rarely used two cores?  Bad advice.  Vista or Win7 for a genre that rarely uses DX10 and when it does... badly.  No.

Windows XP SP3

AMD Phenom II X2 BE

Asus AMD 770 board

4GB DDR2

2x 500GB Raid 0

Once in Windows use Overdrive and Performance control panel to O/C the nVidia and AMD to safe levels.  That system will be built for MMOs, dirt cheap and stable.  Windows 7 is not ready for the gaming masses and well Vista never was.

So much faults in this. First of all, many games already take advantage on multiple cores and more coming every day, I'd suggest him quad core but since the budget is tight triple will have to do.
 

You suggest him an OS which support is about to end soon, also you give ridiculous claim about 7 and vista, which are not true at all.

Also, raid-0 is a stupid idea for gaming computer.

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Originally posted by Solude
Triple core in a genre that rarely used two cores?  Bad advice.  Vista or Win7 for a genre that rarely uses DX10 and when it does... badly.  No.
Windows XP SP3
AMD Phenom II X2 BE
Asus AMD 770 board
4GB DDR2
2x 500GB Raid 0
Once in Windows use Overdrive and Performance control panel to O/C the nVidia and AMD to safe levels.  That system will be built for MMOs, dirt cheap and stable.  Windows 7 is not ready for the gaming masses and well Vista never was.

---

Sure, but he did say he was playing Borderlands so I'm sure he's interested in other games too. I'm guessing the poster wants to keep it on as strict a budget as possible so I agree with these choices - even the cheap $65 Phenom II X2's can run a GTX 260 fine. If you can afford it an X3 would be a good idea though, as many games can take advantage of 3 cores now (almost none get a real benefit in going from 3 to 4 cores though)

For OS, if he wants to save money and reuse his XP key that'd be the cheapest route - otherwise better to just pick up Win7. Also your assertion about Vista and Win7 for gaming are untrue, Vista has been fine after the Service Packs, and Win7 is really just post-patch Vista.

My only real contention is with the 2x 500GB Raid 0 drives - OP should save the cash and just reuse the current hard drive. Raid 0 through on-board implementation just as often hinders game load times than helps due to extra overhead so I don't find it worth the hassle. What Raid 0 excels at is artificial benchmarks, server/database activity and certain data-intense apps.

Originally posted by noquarter

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My only real contention is with the 2x 500GB Raid 0 drives - OP should save the cash and just reuse the current hard drive. Raid 0 through on-board implementation just as often hinders game load times than helps due to extra overhead so I don't find it worth the hassle. What Raid 0 excels at is artificial benchmarks, server/database activity and certain data-intense apps.

The effect is very small irl, only things like heavy video editing where you deal with large files can take advantage from it. With normal magnetic disks raid-0 only increases transfer speeds with large files, other operations can actually be slower compared to single disk. Besides with raid-0 if one disk breaks, you'll lose data on both disks.
 

Not one MMO uses more than two cores.  Those that do support dual cores, only a small handful use two cores fully with most pegging 1 core and the other at 20%ish.  R0 has no overhead.  R0 reviews are available to read on Tom's and Anand in games to test load time, pretty standard stuff, extra cost GB to GB zero.  Also since its a game PC... who cares if it dies.  A single disk is just as likely to crash since the work load isn't split.  Either way... data lost.

The harm with going triple or quad core on a gaming PC is that you increase the cost and decrease your O/C headroom due to heat from the extra, useless cores.

Windows 7 is more of the same from Vista, still crap with no benefit to gamers. It is however pretty and pretty loaded out of the box for multimedia.  Not terribly stable or supported by other software providers like say you're virus scanner but hey MS OSes are super secure so no issue :p 

But hey I'm all ears, what reason is there to use Win7 over XP as a gamer?  What games are coming down the pipe that will use 3+ cores?  Currently its Supreme Commander and Crysis... missing any?  Any DX10 games that will run in DX10 mode at a good rate on a 260?  Would say DX11 but the 260 doesn't support it.

And here's the kicker, when a game comes out that does support 3+ cores... he can buy one then and get a current CPU instead of the relic that would be a 720BE in 2011 ;)

Originally posted by Solude

Not one MMO uses more than two cores.  Those that do support dual cores, only a small handful use two cores fully with most pegging 1 core and the other at 20%ish.  R0 has no overhead.  R0 reviews are available to read on Tom's and Anand in games to test load time, pretty standard stuff, extra cost GB to GB zero.  Also since its a game PC... who cares if it dies.  A single disk is just as likely to crash since the work load isn't split.  Either way... data lost.

The harm with going triple or quad core on a gaming PC is that you increase the cost and decrease your O/C headroom due to heat from the extra, useless cores.

Windows 7 is more of the same from Vista, still crap with no benefit to gamers. It is however pretty and pretty loaded out of the box for multimedia.  Not terribly stable or supported by other software providers like say you're virus scanner but hey MS OSes are super secure so no issue :p 

But hey I'm all ears, what reason is there to use Win7 over XP as a gamer?  What games are coming down the pipe that will use 3+ cores?  Currently its Supreme Commander and Crysis... missing any?  Any DX10 games that will run in DX10 mode at a good rate on a 260?  Would say DX11 but the 260 doesn't support it.

And here's the kicker, when a game comes out that does support 3+ cores... he can buy one then and get a current CPU instead of the relic that would be a 720BE in 2011 ;)

Many mmo's use more than 2 cores, for example warhammer online from which I have 1st hand experience, extra cores really make huge difference. Game developers never reach for equal parallel load between cores, usually they give rendering to some core, effects for another etc. 
 

Here's one list of multicore supporting games, http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33902850 That list is as ancient as 2007, still there are so many on the list.

You don't seem to know much about gaming generally since you say the extra cores are useless, they do not lower maximum oc that much either. Also by that time you need to upgrade your computer next time, the socket will be dead and you need to replace all parts anyway.

You whine about 7 and vista, but still give no arguments why they'd suck? Even superfetch alone makes them much better than xp ever was. Would like to see you play your dx10 game on xp.

---

Originally posted by Solude
Not one MMO uses more than two cores.  Those that do support dual cores, only a small handful use two cores fully with most pegging 1 core and the other at 20%ish.  R0 has no overhead.  R0 reviews are available to read on Tom's and Anand in games to test load time, pretty standard stuff, extra cost GB to GB zero.  Also since its a game PC... who cares if it dies.  A single disk is just as likely to crash since the work load isn't split.  Either way... data lost.
The harm with going triple or quad core on a gaming PC is that you increase the cost and decrease your O/C headroom due to heat from the extra, useless cores.
Windows 7 is more of the same from Vista, still crap with no benefit to gamers. It is however pretty and pretty loaded out of the box for multimedia.  Not terribly stable or supported by other software providers like say you're virus scanner but hey MS OSes are super secure so no issue :p 
But hey I'm all ears, what reason is there to use Win7 over XP as a gamer?  What games are coming down the pipe that will use 3+ cores?  Currently its Supreme Commander and Crysis... missing any?  Any DX10 games that will run in DX10 mode at a good rate on a 260?  Would say DX11 but the 260 doesn't support it.
And here's the kicker, when a game comes out that does support 3+ cores... he can buy one then and get a current CPU instead of the relic that would be a 720BE in 2011 ;)

---

I used to be a huge RAID0 fan in the past but converted after my own experiences and reading. R0 does have overhead especially if you don't buy an $80+ raid add-in card to offload the process. The on-board RAID on most mobo's is actually a software implementation that requires the CPU to coordinate the RAID - not a huge deal because of the immense processing power of today's CPU's, but it does cause extra traffic on the bus that doesn't exist with an add-in card.

Anandtech's review of RAID0 was very critical of it and my own RAID0 tests showed a 4 second longer load time in LotRO compared to a single drive. Windows felt the same in R0 or single to me. RAID0 on hard disk platters can actually punish you on seek times when dealing with small reads larger than the stripe size, increasing the chances of a long seek because you can't finish the read till both drives find the data.

Imagine flipping a coin: heads = lucky fast seek, tails = unlucky slow seek. RAID means you have to flip 2 coins: heads/heads = fast seek, head/tails = slow seek, tails/heads = slow seek, tails/tails = slow seek. The actual read speed when you get there is inconsequential as these are small reads.

3d game loading is lots of small reads - the textures are all stored in one large file but you don't load them contiguously so there is lots of seeking going on within that data bin. RAID0 works tremendously with SSD's however as there are no wait times on platter spinning.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=11
http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0
http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29

I agree as to not caring if a HD fails, but as per google's hard drive failure study, hard drives showed little correlation between usage and their mean time before failure so you would still be doubling your chances of failure and running the risk of a new mobo not recognizing your old RAID when upgrading or recovering data if something else dies.

And you're right there is no extra cost GB to GB involved, but whether the OP actually needs to invest in new drives or 1TB of space isn't really known, he may be just fine with his current HD.

Originally posted by Lansid

First I appreciate everyone's time in reading my humble post. I'm looking for advice for ideas in upgrading... ok, building a new computer surrounding the "nVidia GeForce GTX 260" that I was lucky enough (and humbly grateful) to win.

Here is my (sad) current setup.

--------

P4 2.8 single core

1 gig Corsair RAM

GeForce 7600 GS

Gigabyte 8IPE1000P-G

Windows XP

Apevia ATX-AS500W

--------

What I would like is to be able to play, well, my copy of Fallen Earth at greater that 640x800 resolution which is what I'm sorta stuck with now playing Borderlands with everything turned down/off. A runnable 1400x1050 (my monitor resolution) or near would be great at 60+fps for me. I'm also newb with trying to figure out if I should upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 since I'm upgrading and don't want to run into compatibility issues with xp.

Intel or AMD I am indifferent too, sort of partial to ASUS boards.

Price is the biggest issue for me, so a "budget" fix would be wonderful, but yet a setup that would be able to utilize the Vid Card.

I got a Best Buy card... so I'd like to order the parts from there... but I'm a big fan of Newegg too.

So again, I appreciate your time and help!

----------------------------------------

Vid Card: nVidia GeForce GTX 260

CPU:

RAM:

PSU:

Mobo:

OS:

 

If you are looking for a budget / Performance build so some research.  Tomshardware.com and anandtech.com are great srouces. 
 

Good BUDGET/PERFORMANCE Build

Athalon II 620 X4... $99 bucks for a 2.6 gig quad core..  if you are not going to OC then this is my reccomendation.  if you OC lean towards a Phenom II 720.  NOTE:  Athalon II vs Phenom II is the same arc except the Athalon II has NO L3 cache

4 gigs of DDR2 for budget: COrsair XMS or Muskin

A 650 Corsair PSU should fit the bill jsut fine

MOBO:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.273360 Under 200 bucks for the Athalon II 620 and a 790 Asus mobo.. great deal!

If you dont get win 7 then reuse your xp :)

 Awesome. I really do from the bottom of my heart appreciate all of your advice and time to post! I used to be up to speed with tech, but I really got lost along the way with the 32-64 crossover, what new stuff works on XP, what won't... ect. I'll do some looking around with the info given. Thanks guys!

In a way there's almost too many offerings for the $65-$100 market. How exactly you use your PC becomes the question when realistically all the CPU's in this price range perform fairly close from game to game. The X2 245 ($65) are cheaper and OC well, the X4 620 ($100) kills for multitasking, the X3 425 ($80) fits somewhere in the middle. Like I said earlier I'd try to get at least an X3 as the 3rd core will handle your background apps if nothing else.

For RAM, unfortunately prices are up pretty high now. There isn't really a price difference between DDR3 and DDR2 on Newegg anymore so I'd go with the OCZ 4gb DDR3-1600 RAM because of the rebate. There is a potential price difference on mobo's of about $20 though.

Your power supply is a low quality brand, but since you already have it I would hang onto it and see how well it works. If you get weird crashes going on it's probably because of the PSU.

Your hard drive is probably a 160GB HD? It should work fine.. newer hard drives do run a bit faster but on a budget I wouldn't bother replacing it just yet. If you do replace it, you can get a 500GB HD for $55.

For the mobo, on a budget there isn't a lot of performance difference between chipsets. This $100 MSI NF750-G55 SLI DDR3-1600 mobo looks to be the best fit for your potential system, but I doubt SLI interests you so I would actually use the $80 ASRock mobo from the X3 build for the X4 620 build below.

Here's a budget setup with SLI option and quad-core ($280):
4GB OCZ DDR3-1600 memory $80
MSI NF750-G55 SLI DDR3-1600 mobo $100
AMD Phenom II X4 620 $100

The in-between setup (my preferred) ($240):
4GB OCZ DDR3-1600 memory $80
ASRock M3A785GMH DDR3 mobo $80
AMD Phenom II X3 425 $80

For the cheap route, ddr-2 dual core ($200):
4GB Corsair DDR2-800 $74
ECS A780GM-M3 DDR2 mobo $60
AMD Phenom II X2 245 $65

The thing to remember with an MSI part is you are going to be pretty much on your own when using it.  So being a bit computer literate is helpful.  In fact being MSI literate might even be necessary.  They aren't a user friendly brand.  However, the brand itself usually is always fully featured and comes with superior overclocking options.

I believe I will go with the suggested spec "noquarter" suggested:

"The in-between setup (my preferred) ($240):
4GB OCZ DDR3-1600 memory $80
ASRock M3A785GMH DDR3 mobo $80
AMD Phenom II X3 425 $80"

For me the pricing is just right, my late friend loved OCZ, mushkin and corsair RAM, so OCZ works for me... I've never messed with an ASRock board (gigabyte, ASUS and Abit only and am leery about MSI only because of my lack of knowledge with them) but the board seems like it'll work for me for price and function, and also for spacial limitations with Vid Card *read below*. I've used both AMD's and Intel's, so I'm not devoted to one or the other.

Now I noticed something regarding the Vid Card and the PSU...

on the website www.bfgtech.com/bfgrgtx260896oce.aspx  there a few things that I just now realized:

> One vacant add-in card slot below the PCI Express® x16 slot. This graphics card physically occupies two slots (well that licks...)

> 525W PCI Express®-compliant system power supply with a combined 12V current rating of 38A or more (Minimum system power requirement based on a PC configured with an Intel Core®2 Extreme QX9650 processor) *currently mines a 500w, would a 600ish be sufficient for the build above?*

> Two 6-pin PCI Express® supplementary power connectors -or- One 6-pin PCI Express® and two 4-pin peripheral supplementary power connectors (I don't believe my current PSU has any of these, forgive my ignorance if I'm wrong, however)

The current PSU I have is a Apevia ATX-AS500W www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx it's specs that concern me are:

1 x Main Power (20+4Pin)
1 x 12V (P4)
2 x SATA
8 x Peripheral
2 x Floppy

-----

So I've pretty much narrowed it down save for a few questions of compatability of current PSU vs. Vid Card. With the size of the Vid Card, if I go with the ASRock M3A785GMH DDR3 mobo, then it should just cover the one PCI slot, and leave a PCI express 1x and a PCI slot. Again I thank you all for your in depth advice, your time and help!

I suggest you get some real mobo, doesn't cost that much more and asrocks can have some mystic incompatibility with some parts.

Yes, you need a new psu. Corsair vx450 and nexus value 430 are excellent choices, you don't need any bigger wattage than this. 

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Originally posted by dfan
I suggest you get some real mobo, doesn't cost that much more and asrocks can have some mystic incompatibility with some parts.
Yes, you need a new psu. Corsair vx450 and nexus value 430 are excellent choices, you don't need any bigger wattage than this. 

---

Ah, I haven't tried an ASRock but all the reviews of the newer ASRock's on www.xbitlabs.com have been quite positive so sounded good. It is a micro, only way to get that chipset so cheap, so that only leaves room for either a wireless card or add-in sound card.. if that's a concern you might want to look at some more mobo's - either have to go up $15 for the extra slots, or down $20 and switch to DDR2. A micro feels dumb but honestly I only have a wireless card in my PCI slots so those extra slots don't do much for me.

It does look like a new power supply is in order.. it's possible to use a pair of 4-pin molex -> 6-pin PCI-e adapters, to combine a total of 4 4-pins into 2 6-pins but considering the age and quality of the power supply it might not be worth trying.

A quality 450W is plenty, the rating the graphics companies list is an overestimate to cover the low quality PSU's. But there is a OCZ 550W Fatality PSU on sale for $65 and has a $25 mail in rebate so that really looks like a good deal right now, OCZ's ModXStream and StealthXStream are a little weak but all their other lines are high quality PSU's.